For a moment,

we breathe in tandem

to the beat of a collective heart,

touched by what we cannot see–

some playful, powerful thing

that darts into ears and dances on deft fingertips.

 

The piano is a storyteller

who seamlessly unzips the fabric of centuries

and reaches in to pluck emotion from the past.

It coalesces us into one tapestry

dyed the color of all nations.

When the pianist plays,

the voices hidden in the notes

sing of their cultures.

They are no longer caged in ivory keys.

They are free to tell their own stories.

 

For a moment,

we are no longer ‘people’

but starving souls,

stripped bare of the features that define us.

We know that when we leave,

we will be suffocated once again

by words and prejudice.

We know that when it ends,

we will reach for the stage

that drifts farther away with the ghost of each note.

still water will be broken by applause

as people rise to the feet they forgot they had

and gather their coats

in bunched folds.

 

But for a few fleeting moments,

we are wrapped in the cloth of centuries

within the velvet walls of an opera house;

we are written in lilting notes

and become truly human.